Creative Agents
Overview || Project Leaders || Team Members || Publications || Contact Info
Creative Agents
We are changing that -- quickly. We are building genuinely creative agents that will be of interest to not only researchers within AI and Cog Sci, but also to companies who would be able to profit from the deployment of such agents amongst their workforces. Our first two specimens are BRUTUS.1 and MONA-LISA. (That's a picture of the "real-life" Brutus at the top of this file, on the left. The portrait of Abe on the right was created by MONA-LISA.
We are not only building Creative Agents; we are also looking for answers to the deeper scientific and philosophic questions that go hand-in-hand with our engineering. For example:
David Ferrucci.
Selmer Bringsjord specializes in the logico-mathematical and philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence (AI), and, on the applied side, in the intersection of AI and creativity. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and the PhD in philosophy and logic from Brown University in 1987. Since then he has been on faculty at Rensselaer, where in the Departments of Philosophy, Psychology and Cognitive Science, and Computer Science, he teaches AI, logic, and philosophy of mind. His pedagogy is in large part computation-based: All of his courses make intensive use of the Web, and of courseware of various types (e.g., Hyperproof). The materials thereon for his courses Introduction to Logic and Computability and Logic are in particular demand; they are used by publishers of logic courseware (e.g., Cambridge University Press and Stanford's CSLI). Bringsjord was on Rensselaer's team that won the prestigious Hesburgh Award (1995) for excellence in undergraduate education (for technology-based interactive learning). He was also a Lilly Fellow in 1989, during which time he designed and implemented an electronic textbook for introducing cognitive and computer science. He is co-director, with David Porush, of the Creative Agents Project, which has its roots in a project known as Autopoeisis, launched by a generous gift of $300,000 from the Luce Foundation and grants from Apple Computer. Bringsjord is author of the critically acclaimed What Robots Can \& Can't Be (1992, Kluwer; ISBN 0-7923-1662-2), which is concerned with the future of attempts to create robots that behave as humans. Two new technical books, Super-Minds, and Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity, are forthcoming this year (Kluwer Academic/Lawrence Erlbaum). The book Abortion: A Dialogue will also be published this Fall by Hackett. Dr. Bringsjord is also the author of a novel (Soft Wars}; Penguin, 1991), and papers ranging in approach from the mathematical to the informal, and covering such areas as AI, logic, natural theology, and ethics. He has lectured and interviewed in person and on radio and television across the United States, and in England, France, Ireland, Australia, Germany, Thailand, Japan and Canada.
Ron Noel specializes in cognitive engineering and the study of cognitive, biological and machine design systems. He received his bachelor's and master's degree from New Mexico State University, after which he worked for eight years in two analytical think tanks. In one, a military think tank, he modeled human cognitive, perceptual and decision behaviors for use in computer simulation to gain insights into the potential performance of proposed or conceptual systems. In the other, a cognitive science laboratory, he researched human behavior to develop models of human abilities for creation of software that either interfaced to or automated the behaviors. Returning to academia as a lecturer at the University of Texas at El Paso he received his PhD from New Mexico State University in engineering psychology, specializing in the Human-Computer Interface with a related area in digital design and microcomputer architecture. He is the veteran of many design projects, and many roles within them. He has received awards ranging from a national design award for artwork to an award by the US Army for the creation of original electronic hardware. His current research project, the Mona-Lisa Project, part of the Creative Agents Project, is breaking new ground in machine creativity and the use of non-analytic or holistic processes in design.
David Porush is a professor of literature and science studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic. He has written widely in essays, books, and papers about the history and impact of cybernetcs and information science on culture and knowledge formation, about virtual reality, hypertext, and the future of technology, and about the comparative cognitive challenges of education in Hebrew and English. His book The Soft Machine (1985) was the first full-length study and prediction of the emergence of a cybernetic culture in postmodernism, translated and re-issued in a Japanese edition in 1991, with chapters translated and published in German and French. Porush is also co-PI in an ongoing AI project investigating story generation by computer, and developer of the GAMEWORLD AI system.
At Rensselaer, Porush initiated and administered a cross-disciplinary and cross-departmental undergraduate degree program, Electronic Media, Arts, and Communication (EMAC), and has helped develop the Minds & Machines Program. He is co-founder and former Executive Director of the Society for Literature and Science, former chair of the Literature and Science Section of the Modern Language Association, and has lectured nationally and internationally on cybernetics, virtual reality, and its impact on society. As Fulbright Researcher in the Department of Science Education at the Technion (1993-94), he initiated a new degree program in technical and scientific translation and communication, and conducted a postdoctoral seminar for faculty in the department on the cognition of education. Porush is currently working under Rensselaer's Pew Charitable Trust award for technological education to design a new course in cyberculture.
Porush is a co-PI and co-director of a new Center for Collaborative Research in Learning Technologies, proposed to the NSF for funding at $1.5m/yr for 3-5 years. The CCRLT brings together 20 professors from 14 disciplines, four schools and three universities to develop and assess coherent approaches to using the computer and multi media for education. in K-12, universities, distance learning and lifelong education.